


A Lifetime of Secrets

by Dragonsteamfan



Series: Guardians Universe [3]
Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E., NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonsteamfan/pseuds/Dragonsteamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has discovered a secret that Ducky Mallard hid more than thirty years ago.  Unfortunately for them, he's not as fragile as they believe him to be.  A backstory for the Guardians Universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Year: 1964

Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin lay in a hospital bed looking at his latest round of surgical scars. As an Enforcement Officer for U.N.C.L.E. he'd picked up quite a few over the years. The quiet sounds of the U.N.C.L.E. medical ward did nothing to help him to sleep, thus resulting in his personal examination. His sensitive hearing picked up a conversation right outside the door to his room and he dropped the blankets, listening closely. "I tell you they are all a bunch of over grown children!" a male voice exclaimed in disgust.

"They can't all be that bad," a woman's voice answered. Illya wondered who they were discussing, although he had a pretty good idea in general. There was a constant battle between the Enforcement Agents and the Medical Personnel of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, mostly on the matter of how soon Enforcement Agents could return to their duty. Medical Personnel wanted their patients to be fully healed before returning to duty and Enforcement Agents generally wanted to be out of confinement as quickly as possible. No Enforcement Agent liked being in a hospital, even if they weren't the patient. As they were the ones who were sent straight into trouble, stopping terrorists before they could launch their plans, they were frequent visitors to the medical section, either as patients or visiting their friends who were.

"Oh yes they are, although Section Three aren't quite as bad as Section Two. Not one of them will stay still long enough to heal properly and you absolutely can't tie them down. I mean it, don't ever even suggest it. They panic if you restrain them in any way and as they're trained to kill it isn't worth your life to try, and it means that they end up a mass of scars if they survive long enough to retire," the man said.

"Well that's understandable, Jack! Not one of them hasn't been tied down and tortured for goodness sake! Of course you can't tie them down! Of all the harebrained ideas," the woman said exasperated. Their voices faded out as they continued along the hallway. Illya personally agreed with the woman, that was a harebrained idea. Shuddering at the thought of the restraints that had been used on him in the past, Illya returned to his examination of his incision site. Jack, whoever he was, was correct. He should be a mass of scars as he had done little to prevent them, but he wasn't, which was something he now found puzzling. Good, he needed a puzzle to solve right now.

He carefully eased his pajama shirt off, going slowly to prevent any more pain than could be helped. This was one of the things he hated about having surgery -being careful about the stitches. Very carefully, inch by inch he went over what skin he could see and reach without bending or stretching anything that he shouldn't. That wasn't easy as the surgery had been to stitch back together a knife wound that he had taken in his side, not to mention the other wounds he had sustained in the fight. Speaking of knife wounds, the scar on his left forearm, the one that he had thought had faded a few years ago was gone. Not faded but actually missing. There had been other wounds to that arm in the same location in the last few years, a bullet wound and a hot poker burn if he remembered correctly but there were no signs of those injuries either. In fact, the only scars on that arm that he could find were actually only partial scars. Most of them had sections of completely unblemished skin running through them.

That made no sense. He brought his wrists close to his eyes to examine them. He had been tied up with a variety of objects over many years. He had scraped the skin off of both of his wrists enough times getting himself loose that his wrists should be nothing but a mass of scars. But there was nothing of the kind on his wrists. That was the one place that he was certain that he would find some kind of scar. He examined himself well into the night, but came up with no explanations.

In time he returned to duty and once more to the field. The questions never left his mind, but were shoved to the back; coming to the forefront of his mind only when he was examining the areas that he had most recently had surgery on. He had decided to quietly monitor them in an effort to answer the puzzling phenomenon. At least that had been his plan until late one night a month or so after hearing that snippet of conversation.

That was when he realized that whatever was happening to him, it wasn't just him alone. He had hauled his partner and section chief, Napoleon Solo up the stairs to their hotel room after rescuing him from yet another THRUSH trap. It had been the usual; get in, find Napoleon, rescue him, blow up the satrap, and then haul his partner somewhere so he could look over Napoleon's wounds.

It was nothing that didn't happen with disgusting frequency in their lives. But the moment Illya removed Napoleon's shirt and started examining his chest, he found that the questions about scars weren't for him alone. Napoleon had been tortured with acid on one occasion soon after they were partnered together. The acid had spread down his chest and caused a rather gruesome scar. Now as he lay on the dingy mattress of Illya's very cheap hotel room, Illya could see that what had once been a very smooth and rather large scar singular scar was now a series of patches. The realization only took a moment for him to processes and then he moved on to removing the rest of Napoleon's clothes. There was no time now for his questions about disappearing scars. Right now he had to treat the torture wounds his partner had received this time.


	2. Chapter 2

Washington, DC – Year: 2005

Doctor Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard walked into his morgue and neatly put his hat, coat and umbrella away. It was a quiet Monday morning and he had vague hopes that it would stay that way. He had some experiments that he wanted to run on his private research and a busy day would ruin that, especially since it meant that he would not be able to request Abigail’s help.

He smiled to himself as he thought about the young woman who basically did almost everything forensically needed for the NCIS teams based here in Washington. Abigail was a veritable walking contradiction. A serious Goth, she was also a highly respected scientist with a high security clearance. She was obsessed with death, and yet vigorously hunted down murderers. She dressed in highly whimsical fashions, and yet was one of the most serious people he knew, in her own very strange way. Her parents had done well with their most unusual daughter.

“Hey Ducky!” the woman in question called. Abby skipped into the morgue, today dressed in a white t-shirt with a purple tutu, black leggings and high top sneakers. Her hair was pulled up into her usual pony tails.

“Hello my dear,” Ducky said warmly. His eyes automatically cataloged her health and he was pleased to see that she was in no distress. “Did you have a good time with Ziva this weekend?” He knew she hadn’t, but he was trying to encourage her to get to know the new agent. It wasn’t Ziva’s fault that she had been sent to be on the Major Crimes squad to replace Kate Todd, who had died recently. What the team and the rest of NCIS didn’t know was that Ziva would have been assigned to Jethro Gibb’s team regardless of whether there was an opening for her or not. The assignment had nothing at all to do with NCIS and everything to do with Ducky.

Ziva David was a Mossad assassin; or rather that was what she had been. Ziva’s father, and commanding officer, had long known that his daughter was worth a great deal as a bargaining chip and he had played her ruthlessly. Fortunately for her, the agency that he had chosen to send her to in return for his own political gain was experienced enough to know that simply because she was an assassin did not mean that she would not make a good agent. One of their now retired agents had once been an assassin, and he had been one of the best they had ever had. She just needed a little mentoring and it had been decided to send her off to study under him for a while.

Ducky reached out and patted Abby’s hand as she pouted. “My dear, it is not her fault that Kate died, or that her killer was Ziva’s brother. She dealt with the situation as honorably as she could. I know you are still grieving, but give Ziva a chance.”

“I’m trying Ducky,” Abby said. “It’s just hard for both of us. We don’t have that much in common, but we’re talking.”

“That’s all I ask,” Ducky said. “Now, do you have time to run those tests with me? I do know that you’re quite busy with other cases.” He set his briefcase on his desk and opened it, glancing at her without turning his head.

“You bet! I can’t wait to get my hands on those samples you promised me.” Ducky smiled at the now bouncing Abby and followed her up to her lab.

 

NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE

 

“This is totally fascinating Ducky. Where did you get these samples? They’re incredible,” Abby said, raising her head from her microscope.

Ducky looked a little uncomfortable. “They come from a private patient of mine, Abigail.”

“I didn’t know that you had private patients outside of the team Ducky,” Abby said surprised. She knew that he often treated Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Tony DiNozzo, but that was because neither of the two agents leading the Major Crimes team trusted the doctors at the hospital while they did trust Ducky. Abby was all for it because Ducky was more than trustworthy with anything.

“This one is an old friend. He and his partner found that they had developed an unusual healing ability. The trouble is that they were involved in a type of government service that exposed them to a great many things; far too many things to be able to conclusively say which one caused the healing,” Ducky explained as he watched one of Abby’s machines do a DNA work up.

“And now he trusts you to help figure out how it works, how it happened, and how it can help others?” Abby asked.

“Yes, he is quite aware of his and his partner’s differences and the need for secrecy regarding those differences. There are men and women alike who wouldn’t hesitate to torture or kill to gain those differences, even if no one understands just how they happened in the first place.”

Abby did understand that. It was one of the things that she fought against in her own way, with her troops of forensics machines. “Don’t worry Ducky. You know your patients can count on me to keep my mouth shut. It’s so totally not cool what some people are willing to do for something that’s as transitory as money.” She was pleased to see his smile. Lately it had been missing in action.

“Abigail, with such words you show so much of your heritage,” he said as he patted her arm.

Ducky was obviously proud of her knee jerk reaction and she grinned in return, but it turned into a pout when Tony DiNozzo, second in command of the Major Crimes team came into the lab. “Ducky, we got a case.”

“Please excuse me, my dear. Duty calls,” Ducky said.

“Of course Ducky,” Abby said as she turned back to her microscope. “Tony, make sure to bring me back lots of evidence, and don’t worry about these tests Ducky. I should be done by the time you get back.”


	3. Chapter 3

New York - Year: 1965

 

Illya and Napoleon made it back to New York without any further instances of mayhem and Illya turned Napoleon over to Medical to get his injuries treated better than could be done in the field. As he walked down the hall to their shared office he saw a young couple walking towards him, chained together at the wrist. The man was blond with an average build and the woman was a pretty brunet who could have just walked off a modeling runway. 'Oh good' Illya thought. 'We need more women in Enforcement.' Illya knew the man, (Mark Slate, a British agent) from his time in London and the handcuffs were Mr. Waverly's patented 'get to know your new partner' technique. Two Enforcement Agents were cuffed together for a week and by the time the week was over, the forced intimacy had usually shattered any reserve the two people had with each other.

It also made damned sure that they could get along. Not everyone could pass the test and he had seen more than a few people who had to switch partners before the week was up, but it was good practice for the field. You had to be able to stand being around your partner under any conditions. He and Napoleon had once ended up chained together for nearly three weeks while on the run from THRUSH and other assorted villains through the jungles of Brazil on one memorable assignment, he recalled.

"Illya!" Mark called. Illya nodded and opened his office door. He had to get on the paperwork as Napoleon would no doubt be imprisoned in Medical for a few days while his cuts were stitched and his burns were treated. They would also make certain that the drugs he had been given worked their way out of his systems. Somehow, Napoleon always got out of the paperwork. "This is April Dancer. April, Illya Kuryakin, Section two, number two," Mark introduced them.

April made the beginner's mistake of reaching out with her right hand, which was the one that was chained to Mark. It was her first assignment out of Survival School then, Illya knew. She blushed and Illya just shook his head. "The first one is always the hardest," Illya said as he shook her hand. "That's one of the reasons why it is done here in Headquarters." He led them into his office.

"See, I told you so April," Mark grinned. "Where's Napoleon?" he asked, looking around the deserted office.

"Medical," Illya snorted, "which means that I'm stuck with the paperwork; again." Mark laughed. Napoleon was famous for finding reasons to fob off his paperwork onto his partner. Most of the time the reasons were real and reasonable but Napoleon did it often enough to make it look very suspicious.

"How many days do you have left?" Illya asked as he sat down at his desk and pulled out the forms he needed to fill out.

"Five days, sir," April said quietly. She had heard about the Russian agent. Ice Prince or Siberian Blizzard were the nicest things most people called him. Mark had told her that Kuryakin was hard to get to know but the results were worth the effort. Kuryakin was cold, ruthless and efficient in the field and out of it but if you managed to get under the ice he was a loyal and trustworthy friend. He also had a wicked sense of humor.

Mark had said that the funniest thing he had ever seen was a senior section one agent, a pompous bully by all accounts, being zinged by Kuryakin. The man had stood there with his mouth hanging open, staring at Kuryakin for a good five minutes before he had closed his mouth and walked away. Kuryakin had been trading on the idiot's view that because he wasn't English or a Westerner, that he had to be substandard in his command of the English language.

'The man is a fully qualified agent, second in command of section two in New York which is where the best of all of our agents are stationed, has a scientific doctorate, spends most of his free time in section eight playing with all sorts of science stuff, and the idiot thinks he doesn't know enough English to understand how to play on words!' Mark had been overcome with a giggle fit at the memory although he hadn't told April just what it was that Kuryakin had said. 'You have to see the man in action April. You won't understand it until you do,' was all he had to say.

April was determined not to make the same mistake as the section one agent. She knew that this man wasn't to be underestimated - and she could see that it would be very easy to underestimate him. Illya Kuryakin was slight and not very tall for a man but she could see his muscles under his t-shirt when he threw his jacket onto the coat rack in his office. There wasn't a spare inch of fat on him, she estimated. He had to have extensive martial arts experience too because he moved like a cat; pure predator, although one at ease with his surroundings.

“How are they treating you?” Illya asked, quickly typing up his report.

He seemed to be paying more attention to his work than the conversation, but April didn’t think that was the case. “So far Mark is one of the few not treating me like a lady,” she said wryly.

Illya glanced up at her and returned her exasperated expression with a small smirk of his own. “They never do seem to learn, but you can use that in the field. Be wary of THRUSH though. They tend to use female agents and they are deadlier than most, so their male agents do tend to be more aware of a woman’s strength.” April returned his smirk, and it was then that he knew she would make a great field agent. She clearly understood that she was not the only one who was underestimated simply because of looks.

In the years to come the four Section Two agents became good friends. They were such good friends that when it was discovered that THRUSH had tried to genetically engineer new agents by using the DNA of UNCLE agents, specifically the top two senior UNCLE field agents three years later, April and Mark went with Illya and Napoleon to rescue the infants.


	4. Chapter 4

Washington DC – Year 2005

Abby continued to test the tissue and blood samples that Ducky had given her. She was pleased that Ducky trusted her enough to work on this research. She was pleased for more reasons than just professional pride and friendship. Six months ago she had been forced through a case to run the DNA of every person who worked in the NCIS building, looking for a mole. It was then that she had discovered the shock of her life.

Abby had always known that she was adopted. It had never mattered to her parents and she had been told years ago that her birth father was a good friend of her parents who had been a foreign national while her birth mother had been an American. Her birth mother had died and her birth father had feared for her life should she be sent back to his country. To save her life, he had given her up. Every year on her birthday she had said a special prayer of thanks for the love of her birth father.

Her birth father had turned out to be Ducky. She had no clue as to why he would have feared for her life and the certainty of the story she had been told all her life had been badly shaken when she had received yet another shock from the tests. Tony was her brother, and seeing as how they were the same age, that made him her twin. She had gone to Tony first, wanting to know what his parents had told him before confronting Ducky. To her further shock, he had taken one look at the tests and hurried her into her lab to make sure that she hid all references to their genetic relationship.

Then he had taken her to his apartment and asked her a curious question. Was there any way to tell if they were genetically tampered with? He had sighed at her shocked and confused face, gotten up and retrieved a very old picture in a frame. It had showed two men, one of whom was Ducky and the other was a tall Italian man that reminded her strongly of Tony.

“This is my Uncle Napoleon Solo and his partner, Illya Kuryakin. They were international spies working for a branch of the United Nations. I’ve known for years, ever since I first saw him that Ducky was Illya. They’re both retired from that line of work and it’s kind of like Witness Protection – you get a new life when you retire. From what I’ve seen of Ducky and what I’ve heard about Illya, I’m not sure that he wasn’t given a new personality too. My uncle explained it to me just before he disappeared when I was ten. Two years later I found out that the reason Anthony DiNozzo hates my guts is because he isn’t my genetic father – my Uncle Napoleon is. That was the real reason he disowned me,” Tony explained.

“But now these tests show that Ducky, or rather Illya, is our father,” Abby said, looking at the tests.

“Yep, but knowing what these two did for a living and knowing the sorts of terrorists that they went after, it’s entirely possible that there was something very hinky about how we came to be,” Tony sighed.

“There’s one more test I can run, but Tony it really is sort of useless. You see, if we were ten years younger, both of them could be our parents because the breakthroughs that made IVF possible happened around then. Do you remember when the whole ‘Dolly the cloned sheep’ thing was all over the news?” Abby asked.

“Yeah,” Tony said, puzzled by the turn of the conversation.

“That technology makes it possible to have two fathers or two mothers. An egg cell is emptied, two sets of genetics are implanted, or one in the case of cloning, and then they zap the cell when it’s closed up, starting off cell growth. That’s the only test I have left that I can run,” Abby said apologetically.

Tony sat up straight. “Abby, the terrorists that they routinely went after are what we’d call mad scientists. A ten year tech gap would have been nothing to one of these guys.”

“How can you be sure that they really were spies for the UN?” Abby asked suspiciously.

Tony laughed for a second. “I have a diary of my uncle’s written in a code that he had taught me that told me all about it. Uncle Napoleon told me that one day I would need to know the code to read a book that was in with the stuff he was giving me before he left for his new life. I wasn’t to read it until I was an adult and on my own. I was to never tell anyone about it. One of the things that was written in it was that I was his son and he had given me to his sister to adopt because there were still people out there who would use me, either to force him to give up secrets that he knew or to try and force me to be what he was, only for the other side.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds. “My parents told me that my father was a foreign national who was terrified of what would happen to me if I was sent back to his country,” Abby admitted.

“Illya Kuryakin was ex-KGB,” Tony whispered. “He was traded to the West for intelligence information.”

“We were born on July 7, 1969. Ducky was born sometime in 1936 if they didn’t mess up his birth year, so he was 32 when we were conceived.” Abby looked horrified. “Tony, that means he was a child during WW2. That was the very worst possible time to grow up in the Soviet Union.”

Months later, running the tests that Ducky had left with her, Abby wiped a tear from her eye. She would never, ever be able to tell Ducky what she and Tony knew; which sucked major rocks. It had to be terribly difficult for Ducky to keep so much of his life from his friends. She wished that she and Tony could tell him that his children had grown up to be people he could be proud of, even if they couldn’t tell him that they were those children.


	5. Chapter 5

Chicago – Year: 1969

THRUSH scientists were notorious for their strange and convoluted plans to take over the world, or even just gain a small amount of power. A plague of robotic insects sent to devour the main food crops of a country, youth serums, powerful mind controlling drugs, addictive aphrodisiacs, new methods of torture, and so on were common place. Quite a few of those things had been tested using Illya and his partner. So he really thought that he should have seen this one coming.

Illya looked down out of a vent grate and felt the hatred in his heart turn to the ice he was so famous for. There was a nursery, a delivery room, and a group of three cells on this floor that he could see, and the cells were occupied by dead women in chains. “Damn it! That’s the last one! Why do the carriers keep dying?” one scientist snarled as he carefully lifted a small infant away from a dead body.

The other white coated figure shrugged carelessly. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? This last one lasted long enough to give birth and that’s the only thing they’re good for in the first place.” He carried a second child over to the basinets. “As long as the child survives, that’s all that really matters. New agents for THRUSH, raised to be loyal to the Hierarchy and absolutely perfect for the positions they’ll hold. There won’t be any more mistakes made by people given more power than they can handle.” He set the child down in a second basinet next to the first child. “You’ll be the perfect little assassin one day little girl, and your brother will be the perfect agent.”

Illya wanted to kill these men as slowly and painfully as possible, but that would put the children in danger and that was not acceptable. He glanced at his watch. These men had only five more minutes left to live. The twins were safe for now. These men would do what was necessary to care for them. In the meantime he had confirmation that they were the only survivors of this experiment. He continued on his way down the vent shaft. There should be a file room somewhere nearby and he only had a few minutes to get there.

Mark Slate gulped as he saw the completely emotionless expression on Illya’s face. What those men had said was bad enough that he wouldn’t have wanted to be in their shoes even without knowing that at least one of the infants could be Illya’s child. Knowing that either child could be one, well he was just thankful that Illya would be able to vent his anger on the birdies. He’d have no trouble getting the babies out and protecting them while Illya taught these men that no one messed with his or his partner’s children.

 

NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE

 

Napoleon Solo wasn’t the virtuoso with explosives that his partner was, but he was more than able to get the job done. Sneaking around yet another THRUSH satrap to blow it and whatever information it contained up was nothing new. The identity of the innocents involved were, and the sheer hatred that the thought of his and Illya’s babies, (the only truly complete innocents in this world) in the hands of THRUSH created in him made for a kind of vengeful glee that Illya was trusting him with the explosives this time.

April handed him another explosive out of her pack. She was guarding his back as they laid the explosives around the satrap’s power plant. “How many children do you think there are?” she asked quietly. The question had been bothering her for days as they had planned this rescue. April wasn’t really the maternal sort, she could have easily caught any number of men to be her husband and give her children if she’d wanted, but the thought of her cousin’s babies in the hands of THRUSH made her as protective as any mother bear.

“I don’t know,” Napoleon admitted as he shifted to another spot. “If we’re lucky, the experiment hasn’t gotten beyond the test tube stage, but I have a feeling that this time things are going to come out more on Illya’s side of the goddess of luck than mine.”

“Chyort voz’mi,” April deadpanned. (Oh shit in Russian) Illya had some of the worst and the best luck of any UNCLE field agent. No matter the assignment he got it done, but he always ended up filthy, bloody, shot, stabbed, and otherwise injured or exhausted. “You think we’re going to find babies, not just samples.”

Napoleon nodded. “And I have no idea what we’re going to do to hide them. I could probably give one to my sister. She just found out that she can’t have kids, but what if there’s more than one? What about Illya’s? He doesn’t have any family left outside of UNCLE, and that’s even if it’s safe to keep them with family.”

“This is the last charge,” April said. She handed over the bomb and shot the little birdie that had decided it would be a good time to check out the power station.

Napoleon glanced over his shoulder. Even with the silencer on her gun he had heard it fire. The dead man had left his brains splattered up the wall. “Ran out of sleep darts?” he asked, going back to work.

“Nope,” April said coldly.

He nodded and finished setting the timer. “Time to go. Illya and Mark will be rescuing the children and their mothers now.”

UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE

The two sets of spies met at a prearranged spot to watch the satrap explode. Mark and Illya were carrying two newborn infants. “Their mothers?” Napoleon asked as Mark handed over the little boy he was holding.

“They don’t have any,” Illya said, his voice low and filled with ice. Killing the two scientists with just a pair of knives hadn’t been enough to purge his rage. “THRUSH had found a way to make you their mother, Napoleon. I still have to go over the science,” he nodded at the backpack slung over his shoulder, “but it looks like they mixed our DNA somehow to make these two. There were no other survivors – either of the experiments or the scientists.” The gentleness that he held the tiny baby girl with was at great odds with the ice in his voice. “We have to hide them and that THRUSH ever got this far with this idea.”

“I’ve already taken care of our records, marked them for the Old Man’s eyes only. You have their copies?” Napoleon asked. Illya nodded. “Then as far as our reports go, there were no babies at all. I could take both of them to my sister,” he offered hesitantly. He knew, far more than most, just how losing his family as a small child had devastated his partner.

“Nyet,” Illya said firmly. “They must be separated. One child can be passed off as your womanizing ways catching up with you, but if they were together someone would be suspicious. It’s hard enough to find one child to adopt. I have some friends, they have no connection with our work, but they’d be more than happy to add our daughter to their family.” Only Napoleon could see the tears that were hiding in his partner’s eyes, but then they were partners.


	6. Chapter 6

Washington DC – Year: 2005

Waking up in a cold and clearly abandoned room, tied to a chair, and not knowing how he had gotten there was an experience that Ducky hadn’t had in many years, or to be more precise Illya hadn’t, as Ducky hadn’t existed before Illya’s fortieth birthday and his mandatory retirement from the field. At least he wasn’t stripped to his shorts this time. He had known that it would only be a matter of time before someone had come looking for him once he’d agreed to mentor Ziva for UNCLE’s current head of Section Two. He raised his head, giving a performance of an old man just waking up and being completely bewildered as to what was happening to him.

Directly in front of him Mr. Palmer, Ziva, Anthony, Timothy, and Jethro were lined up and hanging from hooks on the wall. The wall itself looked like it belonged to an abandoned meat packing plant. That explained the chilly conditions. There was a suspiciously empty hook in the center, right between Tony and Ziva. That did not bode well for him. If it hadn’t meant breaking character, Illya would have sighed. This really was shaping up to be a wonderful day; first interruptions to his running tests with Abigail, and now a typical question and torture session. The last was one of the things that he had gladly given up when he’d turned forty, as much as he had enjoyed his work in the field.

“Well, well, Mr. Kuryakin it’s so good to see that our intelligence was wrong. Welcome back from the dead.” An elderly gentleman walked around to stand in front of Illya, followed by two big bruisers with rifles.

Illya’s heart sank. It was Jason Beck, a THRUSH mole who had worked at the New York UNCLE headquarters. He’d managed to get away when he was found out, although not without repercussions. Jason had known Illya and Napoleon quite well before he was discovered. There was no way he could get away with being Ducky now. “I see that you’re missing your finger Jason. It’s good to know that I hadn’t missed.”

Tony DiNozzo had often wondered since meeting Ducky whether or not UNCLE had replaced his personality when Illya had gone into retirement. Everything he had read about Illya Kuryakin in his father’s diary had indicated that surly and sarcastic were main components of the man’s normal nature - so was being a smart ass when threatened. The first two sentences out of Ducky’s mouth told him that Illya Kuryakin was alive and well in there.

It was Illya Kuryakin who was sitting in that chair with the attitude of someone without a care in the world, and a pronounced smirk on his face. Gone was the gentle medical examiner, the healer who used his gifts to catch killers. This was a killer, one who was delighted to find out that he had harmed one of his enemies. It was difficult to watch as the elderly man Illya called Jason backhanded his other father across the face.

Tony wasn’t expecting to see Illya give Jason a surprised look, although it was only seconds before he got an answer to why Illya was looking like that. “Angelique could hit harder than that even after Napoleon had kept her up all night distracting her,” Illya scoffed openly. Tony winced. Even if Napoleon’s diary had exaggerated, he was well aware that his own playboy tendencies and abilities were merely a watered down version of his father’s, and he knew exactly how a woman reacted after an all night sex marathon having done it once or twice himself. That Illya had chosen that comparison, well it really was the most insulting thing Tony had ever heard.

Jason turned purple, but he managed to calm himself down, disappointing Tony, and he was sure Gibbs as well. It would have been nice to see the man have an aneurysm. “Well, I am getting up there in years Kuryakin. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is my revenge on you and Solo. You see, I know about your children. I know that they survived your little attack on Doctor Blackwell’s satrap. I saw the reports you and Solo wrote for the Old Man. Alexander Waverly was a brilliant man, a genius of the espionage world, but he still couldn’t keep me out of his personal files. That’s right. I had access to the deepest, darkest secrets of UNCLE. I’ve waited all this time, until you were reunited with your twins. Now they’ll fulfill their purpose or die fighting it, but either way, I’ve got my revenge.”

Jason walked over to where the NCIS people were hanging from their hooks. “Anthony DiNozzo Junior, adopted son of Anthony Senior and his lovely wife – Josephine Solo, given to them by her brother Napoleon, supposedly a result of his less than honorable behavior with a great many women.”

“And this is supposed to be a surprise to me?” Tony asked. He’d known for years exactly where his good looks and charm had come from.

Jason didn’t answer him, already moving on to…Ziva. “Ziva David, daughter of Eli David, or at least that’s what Eli wants people to think. When in fact, she is the other half of the set of fraternal twins engineered by THRUSH from you and your partner’s DNA. You couldn’t let her go, not really my dear friend.” The last three words were practically snarled as he grabbed Ziva by the hair. She simply smiled at him. “You couldn’t let the only family you had left wander, lost out in the world on her own. They sent her back to you, just like you agreed to all those years ago, fully trained in your own skills – the very purpose for which she was designed.”

“I agree with Tony,” Ziva said at her iciest best. “This is supposed to be a surprise to us? Eli prepared me well for following in my father’s footsteps. My father guarded the world from terrorists like you for many years. I am proud to take his place as an UNCLE agent and prouder to be his daughter.”

“We will see about that when you are done with your new training child,” Jason promised as he left the room, trailing his thugs.


	7. Chapter 7

Washington DC – Year: 2005

 

Abby had finished running her tests, and had come up with a startling conclusion. There was no private patient. This sample had come from Ducky himself. From what she had learned about his time as an UNCLE agent through Napoleon’s diary, (Tony had taught her to read it) the chemical traces that she had found made a great deal of sense. There wasn’t much that THRUSH hadn’t tested on her birth fathers. What was strange was that there were still trace amounts of some of those chemicals to be found nearly thirty years after Illya had retired from being a Section Two agent and from UNCLE itself.

Those chemical traces were probably what he was looking for she decided, and went about gathering up every scrap of information in her lab. She wasn’t about to let anyone else get their hands on this information. She reset all of the equipment that she had used, gathered up all of her printouts and stuffed those into her pocket along with what was left of the samples Ducky had given her. When she was sure that no trace of anything she had been working on was left in her lab, she grabbed her caf-pow and headed for the cafeteria.

Normally Abby didn’t go there, there were lots of better places to get food close to the NCIS building, but Gibbs’ team would be back any time now and she wanted to be on hand when they did. She had just gotten her sandwich and a refill of her caf-pow when she walked by a table that held a group of secretaries gossiping. One sentence stopped her in her tracks. She whirled around, dropped her tray on the table and wrenched the unfortunate secretary around by her shoulders. “What do you mean Gibbs’ team is missing!”

 

UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS

 

“Could someone please tell me what that was all about? Because I’m completely confused,” Tim McGee asked plaintively.

“What about probie?” Tony asked as he shifted around to make a grab at his hook. “By the way, see if you can grab onto the hook, it’ll ease the stress off of your arms and shoulders a little.”

Ziva had already grabbed onto her hook as had Gibbs, so McGee did his best and after a great deal of wiggling, finally managed it. Palmer couldn’t. “All of it,” McGee admitted. “I get that Ducky used to be a guy called Kuryakin, but that’s about all I got.”

Tony smirked, but answered. “UNCLE is the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. It started out as a small, and I do mean small there were only six guys in the first few months, agency under the United Nations. They were the very first anti-terrorist organization in the world. One of their main jobs is to keep World War 3 from happening.”

“THRUSH is the biggest terrorist organization in the world,” Ziva continued. “It holds no allegiance to any single country, is divided up into cells called satraps, and it’s only goal is to take over the world. THRUSH stands for the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.” She would have gone on, but the two thugs from earlier returned and began untying Illya.

“Get up,” one ordered and they yanked him out of the chair.

“Will you slow down!” Illya huffed. “I’m 69 years old. I don’t move that fast anymore!”

The second thug let go and walked over to the wall, pulling out another set of cuffs. The first one told Illya to shut up and smacked him across the face in the same place that Beck had earlier. “What the?” was all he had time to get out. He was leaning in towards Illya and as fast as a snake, Illya had his hands at the man’s chin and back of his head. He snapped the birdie’s neck as easily as most men would open a can of beer.

The second thug turned around at the sound, putting himself in range of Ziva’s legs. She quickly wrapped her legs around his neck, breaking it as easily as Illya had killed the other thug. She used the body as a push off point, swinging her legs up to allow her to unhook her hands before falling to the floor, landing on her feet. Illya went to Palmer, lifting him off of his hook while Ziva freed McGee. Then between them, they gave Tony and Gibbs the lift they needed to free their hands.

When they gathered into a circle so that Illya and Ziva could pick the locks on the cuffs, they saw what had triggered the thug’s reaction to Illya. A small part of his face, right along the jaw, had broken away. It was an appliance, a piece of theatrical makeup used to age a person. Once everyone was freed, Illya cursed and peeled it off. He ignored the other’s reactions to seeing a very young face where they were used to seeing their aged ME, and stared at Ziva.

Ziva smiled. “Cousin to cousin, I see nothing.”

“I thought he was your dad or something?” Palmer asked, thoroughly confused.

Ziva shook her head, still looking at Illya. “No, but I was grateful that he thought I was. It allowed me to protect whoever she is.”

Illya nodded. “UNCLE Section Two agents, the main field operatives, refer to themselves as cousins, and their world section chief as their uncle. We also have a small blood ritual, binding ourselves as blood brothers and sisters. It helps us to overcome our political and cultural differences. We come from all over the world, and such things can be very difficult to overcome.”

Ziva went over to the body of the man she had killed, taking his weapons and passing them around. “Some of the deepest and best partnerships have formed between men and women who otherwise would be enemies. In fact, Illya and his partner were a perfect example of that.”

“Yeah, no one in their right minds would have partnered a Russian and an American during the height of the Cold War other than UNCLE,” Tony pointed out.

Illya transferred his stare to Tony. “You know far too much young man, and you are far too much like Napoleon for my comfort at times.”

Tony shrugged. “He left me his coded diary. A lot of it just makes vague references to where he’d been and what he’d been doing, but the rest of his life was pretty well detailed. He started it after he gave me to his sister.”


	8. Chapter 8

Washington DC – Year 2005

Illya snorted. “Napoleon always was a sentimental idiot. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.” He was busy pulling a gun and some attachments out of his clothes. “You’re quiet Jethro. That’s a bit out of character for you.” He assembled the pieces together, his hands quick and sure, turning the hand gun into a rifle before looking over at his friend and catching the glare that he knew would be there.

Jethro Gibbs did not like secrets, not when they impacted his team, the family he had made for himself over the years. Jethro had known for years who he had been born as, but no one outside of Napoleon had known about his inability to age as they shared the same THRUSH induced affliction. Illya raised his eyebrow as Jethro pantomimed an injection into his neck. “A paralytic?” he asked. Jethro nodded, not losing one iota of the glare. “Well it shouldn’t last more than eight hours at most. Birdies tend to use those during transport of prisoners.”

“That guy Jason said he didn’t want to listen to Gibbs yell. It was just his voice box fortunately,” Tony said quietly. ”

“Wish I had my special,” Ziva muttered to herself as she went over the rifle from the man Illya had killed. Gibbs smacked her on the back of the head, but she ignored it other than to send a glare back at him.

“Give Jethro the rifle, Ziva. It’ll help him vent his frustrations,” Illya ordered. “With any luck we’ll be able to find your special along with the other items we’ve been relieved of as we leave.”

“Special?” Tim asked, worried.

“My personal weapon is an UNCLE Special. Illya has his,” Ziva told him, nodding at the weapon Illya was carrying. They left the room in pairs; Ducky with McGee in front, Ziva with Palmer to guard the innocent, and Gibbs with Tony because Tony was the only one who could really withstand Gibbs in a temper in the back.

The building they were in turned out to be a maze of rooms and corridors. The first sign of life they encountered was a guard posted in front of a slightly larger than normal door. Fortuitously he had his back to them. Illy handed his special over to Ziva, a singular honor she knew, and sneaked over to take out the guard. When the guard was dead, they all hurried over and slipped inside the door.

The man had been guarding a stairway. Ziva took a turn on point, handing Palmer over to McGee for protecting. Tony followed them, which kept Palmer in the middle of the group. As they carefully went up the stairs, Jethro grabbed Illya’s arm, attempting to glare out a question. “You were well aware of who I really am Jethro,” Illya whispered softly, not allowing the friendship he shared with this man to warm his icy stare. “As for how I could kill that man so easily, I was orphaned during World War 2,” he paused for a moment. “And I was a very pretty child,” he said ominously. He shrugged off the stunned man and headed up the stairs, passing Tony on the way.

Tony had heard what Illya had said to Gibbs, but it wasn’t anything that he hadn’t already known or guessed. “He grew up in post WW2 Russia Boss, Stalin was still in charge. Think about it, a state run orphanage if he was lucky, a Gulag if he wasn’t, and probably both for at least a little while. There are only two ways to survive that sort of situation, and I think you can guess the one he chose.”

Gibbs sighed and nodded. They reached the top of the stairs, and crept through the door. They were in yet another corridor, but this one had a row of windows along one wall. The windows overlooked a huge area filled with vats, barrels with ominous markings and men in THRUSH uniforms. “That doesn’t look good,” Tony said, peeking over the sill.

“No, it isn’t,” Illya said, interrupting what would no doubt be a movie reference. “Especially as it looks like they’re going to be dumping those chemicals into the local water systems. Ziva, Timothy, find a place to hide with Mr. Palmer while Jethro, Anthony and I go see what THRUSH is up to this time.” Ziva pointed out a nearby empty office with shades that could be drawn. Illya nodded his agreement and they split up.

Tony, Gibbs and Illya moved quickly to search the offices on that floor. The third one they found belonged to the scientist in charge. The two NCIS officers quickly gave up trying to figure out just what THRUSH was attempting to do, leaving that to Illya as the science was way over both of their heads. They chose to guard the door instead.

Illya set the desktop to copy its hard drive, and searched the rest of the room, paying particular attention to hidden safes and the like. Five minutes later he had found one, hidden underneath a small cabinet and retrieved a set of netbooks. He gathered them and the copy of the hard drive and handed those over to Tony.

Regrouping with Ziva, McGee and Palmer, Illya explained what THRUSH was planning. “They’re manufacturing a mass psychotropic and planning to introduce it into the local water supply. By contaminating every water source, there would be no hope that anyone would escape unscathed.”

“Can we destroy the stuff safely? If that stuff gets into the drains,” Tony said, imagining the fallout if they accidentally did THRUSH’s work for them. Gibbs nodded impatiently. He too wanted to know how to stop these men.

“That’s not a problem,” Illya reassured them. “All it takes is the proper contamination to render the drugs inert, and they’ve graciously helped by ensuring that what we need to ensure that contamination is in the next room. Put enough holes in the vats in both rooms and add a large hole in the wall, and no more drugs for THRUSH.”


	9. Chapter 9

Washington DC – Year: 2005

Abby hurried back to her lab, locking herself in and turning up the volume of her radio to full blast before diving into the computer records. Her family was missing, apparently taken from a faked crime scene and no one had a clue as to why. That was not acceptable to Miss Abigail Scuito. If NCIS couldn’t find them, she would.

None of the people they had previously put in jail were currently out. There were no international problems, accept the usual ones, that involved Ziva or her family. Palmer didn’t have real enemies, just people that he annoyed or creeped out, (Tony’s nickname of autopsy gremlin wasn’t so very far off the mark in some people’s opinion) so that hadn’t been the cause of their disappearance. McGee’s family and personal life were clean, no problems there. It wasn’t the right time of year for any of Gibbs three ex-wives to come after him, and they usually kept their outbursts confined to him, rather than including his entire team.

Tony’s personal life was a mess, plain and simple; at least as far as finding a suspect was concerned. Abby was well aware of that and why it was that way. She had to admit though, that at least he wasn’t as bad as Napoleon had been. Napoleon had rarely had dates that lasted past a one night stand. Even being a single man during one of the most promiscuous times in American history didn’t exempt the man from being a hound dog. At least he hadn’t been scum on top of it. Tony shared that trait with their other father as well. They both treated women very well and they made sure that the women they dated knew very well what the score was up front. They never led a woman on. There was nothing there either.

That left only one person, and one thing – Ducky, or more likely Illya Kuryakin because Ducky was as clean as McGee was; a little cleaner actually. Abby had once had the amused thought that it had been Illya’s spy training that must have taught him how to lead a life so totally mundane. But whatever his kidnappers wanted him for, there was one thing that she knew that they probably didn’t.

Abby smiled wickedly, and should any elderly person who had once been familiar with a certain Russian spy have caught sight of it, they would have known instantly just who’s daughter she was. It also would have sent them to the nearest church to offer up a prayer for whoever had been foolish enough to piss her off.

 

NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE

 

“We don’t have any explosives,” Tony pointed out. Gibbs nodded. He wanted to know how Kuryakin was going to get around that one. He was no fool. He had known about Ducky’s past as Illya Kuryakin, ex-KGB agent, (although he hadn’t known he’d been an assassin) and ex-UNCLE field agent, but he had no clue as to how he’d manage to figure out a way to blow any holes anywhere in that warehouse.

Gibbs also hadn’t had a clue about the whole young kid/old guy thing. Hell, Kuryakin looked younger than Palmer! There was no way the man was of course. He and Tony had both said as much that the old THRUSH guy was right about Tony being Illya’s son, even if he had been wrong about Ziva being Tony’s sister. That did leave the possibility that UNCLE had known about this kidnapping and put in a decoy but not only was the body language off, Gibbs himself had known Kuryakin for over ten years. There hadn’t been a switch. Gibbs had a thousand questions about that situation and a few hundred about others like just who Illya’s daughter was and how had THRUSH been involved in her and Tony’s conception, but there was no time for it now.

Gibbs smacked McGee on the back of the head as his agent wasn’t watching him. When McGee turned around, rubbing at his hair, he gestured to Palmer, then to McGee, before pointing at an old, unpowered exit sign. Then he held up his hand to his ear in a classic ‘call’ sign. It really was too bad that he hadn’t made any of his people learn sign, even if it did mean that he could talk about them with Abby without getting either one of them in trouble.

McGee nodded, and pulled on Palmer’s arm. “Let’s go Palmer,” he whispered. “We’re on report detail.”

“Huh?” the young ME asked.

McGee shook his head. “We have to go call the good guys,” he explained rolling his eyes, before hauling the unresisting man down the hallway. Gibbs smirked before turning to the other three. He pointed at Tony and Ziva, motioning between them, then down the hallway in one direction. Then he indicated that he and Illya would take the other.

The others nodded. It was a reasonable way to split them up, even if the tension between Illya and Gibbs was running fairly high at the moment. Ziva and Illya knew THRUSH and Gibbs and Tony didn’t. All four of them were trained agents and Illya wasn’t as old and frail as he had appeared to be with his disguise as Donald Mallard. There was also the fact that either of the two UNCLE agents, both current and previous, could probably put together a bomb from whatever they found lying around. Neither Gibbs nor Tony had that sort of education.

“Take care of my son, cousin,” Illya said.

Ziva nodded seriously while Tony grinned. “Don’t worry Dad. I always manage to get out alive.”

Illya frowned. “I’ve patched you up enough to know that you don’t have Napoleon’s luck, Anthony. Unfortunately, you got mine. If there is any sort of decency in the universe your sister inherited Napoleon’s so that at least one of you can walk through a catastrophe without getting hurt or even dirty.” Gibbs looked surprised when Tony snickered and Illya looked excessively annoyed.

“That still bugs you huh?” Tony asked, not able to hide his amusement. Illya simply shot him another annoyed look while Gibbs smacked him on the back of the head, not bothering to hold back. “Yes boss,” Tony said and waved a little as he took Ziva off down the corridor.

Gibbs looked over at Illya, raising his eyebrow. “Unless he was caught, the man never even mussed his suit. I, on the other hand, usually ended up in the worst possible shape. It was damned annoying then, and it’s damned annoying now.” He led Gibbs off in the other direction, still muttering about how unfair it had been.

Gibbs wasn’t fooled by Illya’s complaints. He might not have known Illya Kuryakin, but he knew when someone was greatly missed. He’d have to see if he could somehow arrange a quiet family reunion for the three men, and whoever the woman was.


	10. Chapter 10

Washington DC – Year: 2005

Although the slaughter house looked abandoned, THRUSH wasn’t the sort to forget basic security. Every entrance and exit was covered by security cameras, as well as several key areas. The main difference was that these cameras were much smaller than normal and well hidden. Unfortunately for the Major Crimes team, that meant that THRUSH was aware of their escape quite soon after it had happened.

Tony and Ziva were recaptured first. Beck had jumped to the obvious conclusion that they were the most dangerous of the bunch and had overwhelmed them with the THRUSH shock troops he had. Ten to two odds weren’t easy to overcome, but they had given it their best shot, injuring and killing over half of those who came at them.

McGee and Palmer didn’t have even half that number. While two birdies held McGee’s attention, a third slipped up behind them and put a gun to Palmer’s head. With Palmer’s life being threatened, McGee had no choice but to surrender. They were returned to the room they had been held in before. There they were once more tied up and hung next to a very bloody Tony and Ziva.

When the goons brought in Gibbs, Tony’s only thought was for his father; Gibbs didn’t look to be in much danger from his injuries. When Gibbs too was hung right back up where he’d been before, Beck demanded to know where Kuryakin was. Tony listened with great interest as the head goon told Beck not to worry, that Illya wasn’t going to be a problem as he had been shot and had fallen into a muck pit. Before he could say anything else, an explosion rocked the room. “You damned fool!” Beck screamed. “Kuryakin is never to be dismissed until you have his dead body right in front of you! The man’s got more lives than a damned cat! Now get back out there and find him!” Tony grinned, although it tore at the split on his lower lip. “Where is he?” Jason snarled at Gibbs.

At that question Tony laughed out loud, and even Ziva snickered. “You paralyzed his vocal chords remember? He can’t answer you,” Tony managed to get out. Beck’s only response was another snarl.

 

UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE-NCIS-UNCLE

 

Illya tightened the make shift bandage around his thigh, and checked over what supplies he had on hand. It wasn’t much, although he and Jethro had managed to find where Beck had been keeping the items he’d had taken off of the team members. There was a collection of knives, most of them, but not all, courtesy of Jethro’s rules. After all, he knew better than to go anywhere without a knife. He’d learned that back when he was just a child, long before Jethro made his appearance into the world. There were also the team’s guns, including Ziva’s special and his own. His was far older, but still more than serviceable.

Ziva had not carried many of the devices that UNCLE section 8 created, mostly because she was not exactly on a field assignment. Illya snorted to himself. Jethro’s cases were a good learning ground for dealing with THRUSH and other terrorist threats. Ziva wasn’t ready for this, but THRUSH did not wait until it was convenient to mess up their lives. Still, her communicator would have been a great find, if it hadn’t been in pieces. His was still good, but no one monitored channel D anymore. Neither of them had carried around any explosives that day, just a set of lock picks each, injections for questioning, temporary amnesia, and unconsciousness, and a set of smoke bombs.

An explosion rocked the building and Illya’s first thought was of Napoleon. It wasn’t of course. It had been three years since the last time he had talked with his partner. Napoleon had been grumbling about a team of kindergartners masquerading as ATF agents. The thought of Napoleon stuck dealing with his protection assignment and seven agents who could turn into naughty children at the slightest provocation was as always amusing, but he needed to find out just who was causing all that commotion.

The second floor was full of windows overlooking vast areas of the slaughterhouse. At one time this had no doubt been a way for those in charge to keep an eye on their workers. Now it allowed Illya to witness something that he had never thought to see. Abigail was marching down the hallway leaving total mayhem in her wake. Lights were flashing, alarms were blaring, THRUSH birdies were running everywhere, and she was shooting them like they were fish in a barrel as they all paused for a split second in shock at the sight of a nearly six feet tall female Goth in a purple tutu, pig tails and floor length leather jacket marching down the hallway. “Damned fool girl is going to get herself killed,” he muttered as he ran for a staircase that would bring him down behind her.

“ABIGAIL!” he thundered as he watched the last THRUSH agent fall.

“DUCKY!” she squealed, turning around and catching sight of him. She sprinted over to him and threw her arms around him. “I was so worried about you! Have you seen the others? They took everyone, even Palmer!”

“Abigail,” he said sternly. “Why did you kill those men? Even kidnapping all of us is no reason for you to become a killer.”

“Oh I didn’t,” Abby rushed to reassure him. “Ziva showed me her personal gun and there are all sorts of things that she can do with it, including lots of different kinds of ammunition, including sleep darts. So I made up a bunch in my lab while I was running computer searches to see who took you all.” She held up the pistol she was carrying, and popped the clip out. “See?”

Illya took the clip and was not surprised to see a replica of the sleep darts that the UNCLE specials used. “Well then, we’d better get busy and rescue the others. You’re not going to ask?” he wondered, for there was nothing as curious as Abigail when presented with a puzzle.

Abby grinned. “I figured out there was no special patient hours ago Ducky. Let’s go get our people back.”

 

A/N: There you go Duchess, Napoleon as Judge Orrin Travis of the Magnificent Seven. ;)


	11. Chapter 11

New York – Year: 1976

The last two years had been more than a little difficult for Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo. With Napoleon forcibly retired from field work, Illya had been somewhat on his own. He could have easily taken another partner into the field, but knowing the deep partnership that lay between the two men Alexander Waverly, number one section one, had chosen to assign Illya to training assignments with two new agents just getting into the field. Illya had fostered a number of good partnerships that few had thought would work; not that it was by coddling them by any means. Illya had simply done what had worked for him and Napoleon, giving the two agents something in common to fight against – him.

Napoleon had retired, but hadn’t chosen the option of a new life, instead he had gone into section one, the administration of UNCLE. He had wanted to see for himself that his partner made it to forty and in one piece. He was also doing his best to find Mr. Waverly a new successor. Ever since Illya had made the discovery that both of them healed perfectly, even to the point of healing old scar tissue that had been reinjured, he had known that he would not be able to take Mr. Waverly’s place as the head of UNCLE. Wrinkles, age spots, grey hair, all of that was the result of cells not replacing themselves perfectly.

Neither Napoleon nor his partner would be able to age. They’d already had to start using cosmetics to give the illusion that they were getting older, Illya especially. His baby faced partner had always looked younger than he was. They wouldn’t be able to pull it off for much longer, not day in and day out around people who spied for a living. There was only one chance for both of them to keep this information to themselves, which was necessary if they wanted to live long enough to make it to old age.

Napoleon had made sure that he was close by on Illya’s fortieth birthday. There was a small ritual conducted by the younger agents when seeing a retiring one off. Other jobs had gold watches given when one retired, they had gold handcuffs. Only about a quarter of their fellow agents made it long enough to wear them. Death, maiming beyond the ability to return to the field, or more rarely, marriage all took its toll on their ranks.

Napoleon watched with a smile as several young agents, most notably two pairs of partners that Illya had mentored, marched his rather cranky partner off to the HR office, his hands cuffed in front of him. He followed the small procession, a set of folders in his hand. He knew the choice that Illya would make. Standing in front of the HR head, Illya went through the paperwork that revoked his status as an enforcement agent. Never again would he work for UNCLE as a field operative.

“Now that that’s over,” Napoleon said as he stepped forward. The agents quickly removed the handcuffs, turned them over to one of the HR secretaries, and fled the room. No one really wanted to get on Illya’s bad side and they weren’t sure that he wasn’t going to stick around just to torment them a little more. “Which option are you going to choose, partner mine?”

He grinned at Illya’s smirk. They’d worked this out years before, on the off chance that they’d survive long enough. “Medical school,” Illya answered. It was the obvious choice knowing their situation. Illya was the scientist of the pair. He would have to be the one to research their condition. Napoleon didn’t expect that finding any answers would help all that much, or that they would come any time soon, but they still needed those answers. Illya was also the only one stubborn enough to pursue this puzzle.

“Then here is your new identity,” Napoleon said as he handed over the top file. Oh he was going to have fun with this. It was really cruel of him, but he couldn’t help himself. Illya was a master of undercover operations. There was no doubt that his partner could pull it off, but Illya was going to strangle him for choosing a persona so far removed from his own. The name was a particularly bright red cherry on top of the humiliation for his reserved partner.

Illya opened it and read his new name. “Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard?” he asked. “Napoleon, I’m going to kill you,” he said with the ease of someone who had said it more than once. “You do know that this means I get to choose your retirement? I’m thinking something along the lines of a long term placement in a monastery.”

“Oh I have no doubt that you’ll come up with something very good to get even with me,” Napoleon admitted. “Now, Waverly and his wife are going to be playing your parents, so you have an excuse to come around. Mrs. Waverly was most insistent about that.”

They walked together towards the Del Floria’s shop entrance. All of the arrangements had already been made, Illya saw as he looked through the file. He was enrolled at a local university going straight into the medical track. All of his general course requirements had been transferred from a college in Scotland. “Scottish?” he asked.

“Your English still sounds like you’re from the British Isles, but not strong enough to be British yourself. This was as close as I could get,” Napoleon explained. ‘Illya, no he’d better get into the habit of Ducky’ Napoleon thought. ‘Ducky looked amused the more he looked through the file. I hope he likes his new life. Now all I have to do is find that replacement for me and I can join him.’


	12. Chapter 12

Washington DC – Year: 2005

Abby studied the man in front of her as he led the way to where their family was being held. He was completely filthy. The only thing that looked even remotely clean was his black t-shirt, and that was plastered to him like he’d fallen into pond; a foul pond from the smell. He was also limping and had a make shift bandage wrapped around one thigh. “You did cause the explosion earlier correct?” Ducky asked.

“Yep, I brought silly putty with a bang,” Abby replied. “I knew that whoever had the team wasn’t likely to want to let me in. So I brought lots of door knockers.” Ducky’s youthful looks backed up Abby’s suspicions that his ability to heal had been a result of something THRUSH had done. She knew that UNCLE enforcement agents retired from field work at age forty. She didn’t wonder why he faked being older either. He had explained his reasoning to her earlier. She just hoped that everyone else would be willing to keep the secret.

Ducky stopped and looked at her intently. “Just how much C4 do you have?” Abby put her pistol in her tutu and wiggled out of a backpack made of the same leather as her coat. When she opened it up he grinned and said, “Should I ask where you got it or just be thankful that you enjoy explosives as much as I do?”

“It’s amazing what you can learn at forensic conferences,” Abby said with an answering grin.

“Come on,” he said, changing directions. “This changes the situation.” They came to a set of swinging doors and snuck through. “Each of these vats and barrels’ contents have to mix with the contents of the vats and barrels in the next room. That way Jason won’t be able to drug DC. The liquid in these containers will contaminate the drugs in the others and they will be rendered harmless. Well somewhat harmless, I don’t think the EPA will be too happy with us.”

Abby nodded but was more interested in something else. “Who is Jason and why is he stupid enough to keep this stuff around, much less in the room next to his drugs?” She pulled out her phone, where she’d put the blueprints to the slaughter house. She wanted to know where the drains ended up. When she realized the ones from the two rooms ended up in a set of large tanks rather than going straight into the local water systems she got busy attaching detonators to blobs of C4. The barrels were on pallets and would only need one bomb to take out all of the barrels; each vat would need one of its own.

“Jason Beck works for an organization called THRUSH,” Ducky began.

“Ok, so he’s an uber terrorist and I’m guessing that the two of you knew each other when you worked for UNCLE?” Abby asked as they began sticking the explosives where they would do the most damage.

“How? Anthony!” Ducky growled.

“Hey! It’s not like he spread the news around NCIS,” Abby pointed out. “The only reason he told me was because of that mole case six months ago. I had to run DNA on everyone and you came up as mine and Tony’s dad. Tony made sure I hid the information and then took me back to his place so he could explain why. He didn’t think that Napoleon would lie about being our dad, so I went and did another test. It showed that we had two dads rather than the usual mom and dad situation.”

Ducky stopped and turned from placing the last bomb. “You’re my daughter?” he asked, amazed and confused. “But I gave you to Karen Whitaker!”

Abby nodded. “Yeah, and the way I heard the story you giving me to Mom gave Poppa the guts to pop the question. They’d been together for years, but they weren’t married.”

“And I only knew Karen’s last name, never Thad’s,” Ducky realized. “Well, you being my daughter is a lot more believable than Ziva.” He returned to their previous conversation. “These wastes were probably just collected from all over this satrap and just stored here.” He finished the last bomb and pointed at a section of wall. “There’s no door between these two rooms so they were reasonably safe from contamination. We’ll just have to make a door.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Abby said as she watched Ducky place the charge to make a large hole. They ducked behind one of the larger vats and waited out the explosion. “Why Ziva?”

“Beck was convinced that Ziva was my daughter because we shared the same profession and one or two personality traits, especially when it comes to dealing with imbeciles,” Ducky admitted.

“Like that guy you threw off the cliff that Gibbs told me about?” Abby grinned as she walked through the hole.

“Very much so,” Illya said as they both began shooting the THRUSH technicians. “You see, THRUSH wanted to duplicate and improve upon Napoleon and I as agents when they created the two of you. So they boosted our primary traits, or at least they tried to. The trouble was that no one besides Napoleon knew me well enough to say just what my primary traits were. April and Mark, two of our cousins,”

“Other enforcement agents,” Abby clarified and Ducky nodded. They got to work setting the rest of the bombs.

“They knew me well enough to probably see that THRUSH was taking a tremendous chance. Much of what I was came from the world I lived through, something that they would not be able to duplicate. Anthony grew up with Napoleon’s family, not because he was attempting to finish THRUSH’s work, but because he had family and it is still very important to him. I had no family aside from my fellow agents. I didn’t want that sort of life for you, so I gave you to friends of mine. They knew nothing of my work, but I knew them, the sort of people they were. You have to become an excellent judge of character in that line of work. I knew that they would let you grow up to be what you wanted to be. You have my best traits, not the ones I was forced to develop.”

“Like what? I can see Napoleon in Tony because of the diary that he left, but I’m not sure that I see me in you,” Abby asked.

Ducky smiled. “You have my passion for science, my love of alternate cultures and in my day jazz was very much a scandalous culture, you take people for themselves rather than whatever group they belong to, you can’t stand an unsolved puzzle, you’re stubborn to say the least, you are extremely loyal to those you call friends, you prefer to work alone in your lab because few people can keep up with you, and you have a keen interest in death, all of which comes very much from me. Fortunately you seem to have gotten Napoleon’s luck with situations even if you don’t have it with the opposite sex.”

“I think I’d rather have my bad luck with guys than Tony’s luck with women,” Abby admitted. They set the final charge and left to find the others.


	13. Chapter 13

Washington DC – Year: 2005

“What do you mean you can’t find Kuryakin?! How hard can it be to find one small old man?! He can’t be moving that fast! I don’t care if the cameras are out! There is no comic book wanna be superhero wandering around! Kuryakin’s making you see things! Now get out there and FIND HIM!!!!” Beck was screaming. Abby suppressed a giggle and waited for the thugs to flee from their employer. They ran out of the room and completely missed the two figures hiding behind the open doorway of the stairwell.

When they’d passed Abby followed Illya into the room the screaming had come out of, and pain filled yells were still sounding. Their pistols made short work of the two men who were beating on Tony, who had been tied to the chair that Ducky had been in earlier. “Hello Jason,” Illya smirked, as he put his pistol to Beck’s head.

“You were right about the comic book wanna be, but wrong about there not being anyone else,” Abby smiled as she walked by. She hurried through getting Palmer, Ziva, McGee and Gibbs down. Ziva went and grabbed the netbooks and computer files that had been thrown to the side of the room. Palmer had been given the bundle that had been wrapped up in Tony’s button down shirt but had not been able to hide it before he and McGee had been captured.

“By the way Jason, you were incorrect about my daughter,” Illya said to the shocked THRUSH agent. The sight of Illya Kuryakin still in his prime, abet as messed up as any mission tended to make him, held the THRUSH agent speechless. “She’s not the assassin, she’s the Goth scientist.” With that, Illya shot Beck between the eyes, killing him instantly, although not before Beck had fully realized his mistake. He hadn’t been facing one Kuryakin, he’d been facing two. “Let’s get out of here,” Illya said. Abby and Gibbs looked up at the shot from where they were hoisting Tony out of the chair, but didn’t comment.

Abby led the way out of the building and to the van that she had brought. While she was perfectly comfortable driving her hearse to a rescue, there wasn’t enough room in it to accommodate the entire team. After everyone was and inside sitting on the blankets she had strewn around the back as the only seats were those for the driver and front passenger, she handed the large first aid kit she’d brought to Illya. “Who wants to do the honors?” she asked, holding up the remote for the detonators while Illya and Palmer patched up Tony and Ziva.

“OOO! Gimmie!” Tony said as he reached for it. Without any hesitation at all, he pushed the button, setting off all of the bombs Abby and Illya had set. They could hear the explosions from where they were, but no one was expecting to see the building go up through the van’s windshield. “You know, I really should have expected that,” Tony remarked fatalistically as Abby called 911 and scrambled into the driver’s seat. “The two of you did set those explosives after all.”

Illya shrugged as Abby drove the van away from the fire. “Some of the compounds must have reacted badly with each other. Not all of them were marked so there was no way to tell everything that THRUSH was storing in those containers.” He concentrated on cleaning the cuts on Anthony’s face. The state of his son was much more important to him than another THRUSH satrap going up in smoke, even if there were still THRUSH goons inside.

Abby glanced in the rearview mirror and had to bite her lip to keep her snickers to herself. McGee and Palmer were gapping at Illya’s nonchalant dismissal of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage, and that was if only the slaughterhouse and meat packing plant were the only casualties. The area was full of abandoned warehouses and one time factories. There was no telling how many people were still inside the satrap and there was no telling how much damage would be sustained and lives lost, if there were any homeless people inside the other buildings, if the fires spread. “How often did you used to do this?” McGee finally asked.

Illya shrugged again. “When I was seven years old I was taken in by the KGB. Someone had spotted how intelligent I was and planned to make use of it. I graduated the equivalent of high school five years later. I attended college in Georgia in the Ukraine until I was fifteen. I was sent to UNCLE when I was nineteen, just having finished my required military service with the Russian navy. By that time I was already an accomplished assassin for the KGB and had finished most of my work for my doctorate in physics. You don’t need to worry about the men I killed for them McGee. Most of my targets were people I am still quite happy to have sent on to their reward. Pedophiles do not deserve to live, not in Moscow or anywhere else in the world.

“I spent two years in Paris finishing up my degree and I spent the summer in between going through UNCLE’s Survival School. After that I spent two years in the London office. Most of the work I did out of London wasn’t all that exciting, but there was enough trouble to get me promoted to New York. Once I was there, I was partnered with Napoleon Solo and we averaged at least two missions a month until he turned forty. I averaged four missions a month for the two years after that, but it was mostly babysitting younger agents. Out of all those assignments I frequently was required to blow something up and I don’t believe that I ever had an assignment where I didn’t have to kill someone.” He turned to Palmer; handing over one of the knives he’d just finished sterilizing. “Would you mind removing the bullet from my leg?”


	14. Chapter 14

Washington DC – Year 2005

Abby parked on the road behind Ducky’s house and they sneaked over to the overgrown hedgerow that marked the edge of the property. From there they peeked through the branches to look into the backyard. Mrs. Mallard was there having tea with her caretaker, a Miss Potts. Gibbs knew that Miss Potts knew nothing of UNCLE and very little of NCIS. When they had first met she had remarked on how grateful she was that Ducky never brought his work home with him. As Ducky was an ME, he hadn’t blamed her one bit for that. He looked at the broad expanse of lawn that led from the hedgerow to the house. It was a great security measure, but now it was a definite hindrance as they needed to get Kuryakin inside without anyone seeing him.

To Gibbs surprise Illya didn’t look a bit phased by the situation. He just put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bird call. To his further surprise, Mrs. Mallard jumped up out of her chair and began yelling about Nazis. Any other woman would have been flailing her arms and generally making a nuisance out of herself if it had really been an emergency. Not Mrs. Mallard; she began dragging Miss Potts into the house, calling for guns and barricades. Apparently she had every intention of keeping the Nazis out of her home and would defend it to the death.

The moment the two women were out of sight Illya was running through the backyard. A moment later the rest of them joined him in ducking through the cellar door that he’d unlocked. “I can’t believe you did that! That poor old lady might not remember in the next five minutes, but that’s just cruel!” Palmer was aghast at Illya’s behavior, something that Gibbs wasn’t really surprised about. Palmer just really didn’t get people who worked in the field.

Illya snorted. “That poor old lady loves it when I do that. She’s always on the lookout for another chance to be as flamboyant as possible. She’s probably locked Miss Potts in the pantry again.”

“The closet actually, my dear boy,” a very calm Mrs. Mallard said as she came down the kitchen stairs into the cellar. “She’s gotten too good at avoiding the pantry.” She gave Illya a long look and sighed. “You look like you were in the field again. Where are you hurt this time?”

“THRUSH was most insistent that we accept their invitation. Mr. Palmer took care of the bullet in my leg. It was the only thing that needed attention,” Illya said. “I’m going to go get cleaned up.” Mrs. Mallard shook her head exasperated.

“Abs, go let Miss Potts out,” Gibbs ordered. His voice had returned during the ride back to Ducky’s. “Mrs. Mallard, is there somewhere we can go to wait for Illya?”

“The basement is right this way,” she said. “We’ve set it up so that you don’t have to worry about being seen.”

Abby went to let Miss Potts out of the living room closet while Mrs. Mallard led the others over to the basement. “Hey, sorry about that,” Abby said as she let the poor woman out.

“Not a problem, she doesn’t do this often and it’s not like I’m ever locked up for more than a few minutes,” Miss Potts said with a smile. “I’m just glad that she forgets about the Nazis when she sees whoever it is that’s set her off. I really can’t blame her. Doctor Mallard told me once that she was a member of the French Resistance when she was a girl. It’s not surprising that time in her life is such a strong memory.”

“Well we’re here now and Ducky’s upstairs getting her settled down,” Abby said with a smile. She saw Miss Potts off and hurried down to the basement. “Hey Mrs. Mallard, were you really a member of the French Resistance in WW2?” she asked as she came in. The basement room had been finished with a lush blue carpet and wooden wall panels. The furniture was leather, but worn and comfortable, perfect for relaxing in. The woodstove completed the homey atmosphere.

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Mallard said with a smile. “I was supposed to be studying at one of the cooking schools. My mother was convinced that it was the only way I was ever going to gain enough skills in the kitchen to land me a husband. Instead, I ended up trapped over there by the Nazis. I wasn’t about to just let them get away with the things they were doing. It’s strange how things work out. Mother wanted me to land a refined husband. I ended up a spy.”

“And married to one of the best in the business,” Illya said as he entered the basement. He had showered and changed into black jeans, a black turtleneck and wore his special in a shoulder holster. He sat down in one of the leather recliners with a sigh. “I hate bullet wounds, but they beat torture any day.”

“No dear, that was you and Napoleon,” she said firmly. “I do wish the two of you had been able to stay at UNCLE. Alexander was dreadfully disappointed when Napoleon didn’t want to take over for him, although from the looks of you it was the better choice.”

“It’s not like we’re completely out of the enforcement business. Napoleon made a very good judge and I enjoy my work as Ducky,” Illya replied.

“How did you end up as Ducky?” Gibbs asked, determined now to get answers to his questions.

“Napoleon,” Illya, Tony and Abby chorused. Laughing, Illya continued, “He’s the only one I would allow to get away with setting me up with an identity like this one. He was correct though, no one who knew me would ever believe that I was capable of pulling off Ducky’s personality.”

“I had wondered if UNCLE had given you a personality transplant,” Tony admitted.

“That sort of brainwashing rarely actually works for long,” Illya pointed out. “It’s been more like a long term undercover assignment, with fewer of the normal dangers. Of course if Madam Director doesn’t get off our case, I just might forget that I’m retired,” he growled.

“I’ll help hide the body!” Abby offered eagerly.


	15. Chapter 15

Washington DC – Year 2005

“Alright you two,” Gibbs growled as the rest of them laughed at Illya and Abby’s blood thirstiness. They were all starting to unwind from their impromptu introduction to THRUSH hospitality. “I know she’s a pain, but she is the Director.”

“GIBBS!” Abby protested. “She made me wear a monkey suit in my lab! It’s bad enough that I have to do that for court!”

“At least it was only for a day and you changed before too many people had a chance to see you,” Illya tried to cheer her up. “I had to dress in drag for a month on a case once. Thank God Mr. Waverly managed to see sense and allow women to enter Survival School after that one.”

Mrs. Mallard chuckled. “So that’s what had Alexander so unsettled. You scared him to death after that case. It was the one and only time he ever wondered if your oaths would hold you back.”

“I admit to being more than angry, but I never would have harmed him,” Illya said, put out that anyone would have questioned his loyalty. “I simply did not understand why I had to do the job when I knew that a real woman would have been able to do it better and being married to you he knew that!”

Having the question of just who Mrs. Mallard really was answered, Gibbs decided to ask another before things got too far off track. “So, how did you get back at Solo for the new identity?” – because he just knew that there was no way Illya had let Solo get away with naming him ‘Ducky’.

Illya smirked. “I set him up for celibacy.” Amid Tony’s gasps of dismay and Abby and Ziva’s laughter, Illya explained. “Sometimes an innocent, someone who is not part of the game, will get caught up in one of our cases. Usually when this happens, the poor fool will end up getting the ride of his or, as was usually the case where Napoleon was involved, her life and if they manage to survive, that is the end of it. However, vary rarely someone will end up needing long term protection. Usually a field agent who has been forced to retire due to age, rather than competence will be assigned to protect them. I ‘married’ Napoleon off to one such witness.”

“How’d you end up with UNCLE Ziva?” Gibbs asked, not paying attention to Tony’s getting on Illya about how terrible a prank that was and Abby and McGee whispering to each other. He had already figured out that Napoleon Solo had to be made along the same lines as Tony.

“My father traded my allegiance for ongoing information on THRUSH activities,” she said with a shrug. “While Israel is a member of the UNCLE charter, and has been from the beginning, most of the Israeli agents have been more support staff than Enforcement or Security. Sir John, who is the current Number One, Section One, threatened to cut my father out off completely if he didn’t provide an agent who at least had the potential to pass Survival School.”

Gibbs, who knew a great deal more about David than he wanted to, understood just how badly Ziva had been used. “He didn’t think that you’d pass,” he concluded.

“No more I think, than the KGB had expected Illya to pass,” she guessed.

“Actually my superior knew that I would pass, he just wanted to get rid of me in a way that would keep his hands clean,” Illya said mildly.

“That’s something I always wanted to know,” Tony said eagerly. “Just how did you end up with UNCLE? And why would this guy want to get rid of you in the first place?”

Illya snorted in contempt. “He wanted to get rid of me because he was an idiot. He thought I was gay, but I was too well protected to just shoot for the crime.” Amid protests and exclamations of shock, he simply shrugged. “As I said, he was an idiot. It never occurred to him that when I was first assigned to him I was a fifteen year old who had just finished his masters degree. By the time I began my military service I was well aware that the only way a woman would be interested in a far too smart for his own good teenager was if someone was paying her to be – and I was far too intelligent to let my hormones rule my life. At the time I had decided that I wasn’t about to let anyone get that close to me because I had seen too many men get killed or worse for their indiscretions.”

“Well it’s obvious that you overcame that one eventually,” Palmer said.

While Gibbs and McGee glared at him for being so rude, Tony made a buzzing noise. “Wrong Palmer - at least if you’re going on the evidence of me and my sister’s existence. We were created in a lab.”

“What?” came from around the room.

“We’re test tube kids,” Abby explained. “THRUSH made us from DNA samples from Illya and Napoleon. They were trying to create people who would be just as good in the spy business as our dads, but for their side.”

“While you are correct Palmer, it had nothing to do with growing up,” Illya said, taking pity on his assistant and wanting to distract the group from his children’s origins. “That was all Napoleon’s doing. He is very much like Tony and my complete opposite. When he and I were assigned as partners, he simply refused to let me hide in my shell. He dug his way through my walls, dragging me out into all sorts of social situations and guarded my back through everything for twenty six years.”

“Between Enforcement Agents, a good partnership never ends when a case does,” Ziva said, also wanting them to understand. “For an average of ten to fifteen years your partner is the only one standing between you and death. It is the strongest bond I know of.”

“Any other questions?” Illya asked.

“Yeah, just how did you find us?” McGee asked Abby.

“AH!” she said with a grin and a finger pointed towards the ceiling. She jumped to her feet and went over to Illya, pulling a silver pen out of his pocket. “Once an UNCLE agent, always an UNCLE agent.”


	16. Chapter 16

Washington DC – Year 2005

Several Months Later

 

Things had returned to what passed for normal at NCIS. Palmer still stumbled over himself. Ziva still struggled with learning investigating and American sayings. McGee still wavered between experienced agent and rank probie, although his experience had boosted his confidence in himself. Director Sheppard still glared and pushed while Gibbs simply glared right back and continued to do things his way.

As for Ducky, Tony and Abby, there was nothing in their behavior to show that anything had happened. The three of them never referred to the team kidnapping, to THRUSH or UNCLE, or even to each other as family, but then at NCIS they never had to before. Ducky had always behaved in a grandfatherly way towards the younger members of Gibbs team. Tony had always treated Abby like a much loved little sister, and she in turn had returned the two men’s affection.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for Ziva coming in about a week after the kidnapping looking like a shell shocked accident victim, Gibbs would never have known that Illya and Abby were having play dates in his home lab. The very thought was enough to send a shudder through him. He had known for years that Abby in her lab with nothing to do was something to worry about. The two of them working on anything that happened to occur to them at the spur of the moment was downright scary.

Abby wasn’t the only one getting to know Illya as opposed to Ducky. It turned out that Illya was a master of disguise and undercover work, something that had been made extremely clear by the kidnapping. Tony had begun to learn how to put together disguises and use them in his already very effective undercover work. Gibbs had no doubt that eventually he would one day see a complete stranger walk into NCIS and have it be Tony.

Gibbs checked each of his team as they came in to start a day of cold cases. There were no current cases and all of the paperwork from their last one was complete. Today would be a day for the routine things like the paperwork to restock their supplies and banging their heads against the proverbial brick wall going back over statements and other details of their cold cases. “Morning Boss,” Tony said with a yawn as he slid into his chair.

Gibbs grunted as he was still on his first cup of coffee. Ziva was the next one in and Gibbs could see that something was up. “Conference room,” he said as he stood up and grabbed her upper arm. He ignored Tony’s wince. He wasn’t going to hurt her and as she wasn’t fighting him, but instead came along like a five year old who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, he knew that whatever was wrong was serious. He stayed silent as he went through the process of calling the elevator, starting it and then stopping it between floors. “Tell me.”

Ziva took a deep breath. “Illya has recommended that I begin formula runs.” At Gibbs confused look she said, “Baby jobs?” hoping that she was at least somewhat close to what she was attempting to say.

“Milk runs,” Gibbs corrected her kindly.

“Yes, milk runs,” Ziva nodded. “I know that I am not ready for more than that, but I must begin somewhere.”

“You leaving?” he asked. It would be a shame if she was. She was turning into a good agent, one that he’d like to have around for a while.

“That is up to you. Before I can go into the field on a full time basis, I must have a partner. That process can take some time. It took Illya two years of such milk runs before he was sent to New York. He was lucky that the first partner he was matched to there was Napoleon Solo,” Ziva explained. “Candidates for partnerships are handcuffed together for a week to see if they can handle the intensity such a partnership requires. Either one can remove the handcuffs at any time, but to do so means that the match has failed.”

“And Illya went through this for two years before he met Solo? They were partners in the field for twenty six years, is that normal?” he asked.

“Yes, he did. They were most fortunate. Gibbs, UNCLE agents are the best in the world, even the parking attendants speak at least two languages and have advanced education. Kuryakin and Solo were the best of the best. Most field agents last about ten to fifteen years before they die or are wounded so badly that they are not able to qualify for field work. They did not do either. They retired because they turned forty. I do not expect to be so fortunate,” she said stoically.

“Do your week in cuffs here,” Gibbs said and started the elevator again. He didn’t tell her that he wanted to make sure that the new partner passed both his and Kuryakin’s inspection before they let her go.

Once back in the office, Gibbs was pleased to see the last of his agents at his desk. McGee picked up a cup of coffee and a file, bringing both to Gibbs’ desk. “I found that information you wanted,” he said and handed over the file. The coffee he left on the corner of Gibbs’ desk.

Gibbs opened up the file and having read the first line, gave McGee a slight smile. “Go find me a case,” he said and turned back to the file. The file was a brief on a federal court judge, now retired, by the name of Orrin Travis. Travis ran the Denver branch of the ATF. It was going to be hard for McGee to find a case in Denver for them, even harder for him to find an excuse to drag Abby along, but Gibbs knew his people. One way or another, they’d find a way to reunite Ducky, Abby and Tony with Travis. It wasn’t right that they’d had to separate their family for so long.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, there is no mention of Sentinels or Guides here. This is a backstory. These characters In This Incarnation will be prominent in the next chapter of the Guardians universe.


End file.
